


The Past or the Future

by StrikeLikeACobraKai



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Fixing THAT scene, Golf N Stuff, No details given but implied past underage behavior, Reclaimed Love, Romance, Starting Over, True Love, True Love's Kiss, We all know what we want, Where else to go for a date?, reconnecting, shortform writing, the Carmen storyline didn't happen in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28483272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikeLikeACobraKai/pseuds/StrikeLikeACobraKai
Summary: Ali thought that she and Johnny would be together forever, but life had different ideas.When they see each other again after thirty-four years, Ali wonders why it feels like no time has passed, and why she still wants exactly the same thing as she always did. Some things are just meant to be.aka: After the date at Golf N' Stuff, this is what really happened.Written post Cobra Kai Season 3. Shortform writing.
Relationships: Johnny Lawrence/Ali Mills
Comments: 72
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started as a quick little fic, I guess a fix-it! I did not expect to ship this in 2020, nor did I expect the show to basically force me to. I’m only human, so here we are. I tried to resist, and it failed <3
> 
> (As I said in the tag, this is slight divergence, in that Carmen and Johnny didn't happen. I'm writing this, so I'm allowed to choose that, because I don't like what the writers did.)
> 
> Given the wonderful response to the fic, I decided to continue it, still in short-form.

Johnny nudges Ali’s shoulder. “Hey, the silver lining is you get to ditch Schwarber.”

She laughs. “That’s true… that’s true.”

He’s still got his legs way too far apart on the seat, manspreading like nobody else could dream of doing, but Ali hasn’t minded it all night, and she’s hardly going to start now. There’s been touch after touch, starting with the lingering hug at lunch, her hand on Johnny’s shoulder playing golf, the way they sat on the Ferris Wheel.

Asking Johnny to take a selfie ended up meaning his cheek was right up against hers, like the most natural thing in the world. He was in no hurry to move away while she took a few shots. His skin was a little scratchier than it was decades ago, a man and not a boy, but it still felt like Johnny.

It pretty much sealed the deal about what would come next.

A night of so much flirting has just the one end, and Ali bumps softly into Johnny’s arm.

“I forgot how cold it can get in the Valley.”

“Yeah.”

He takes no time at all to put his arm behind her, like a response he doesn’t even have to think about. For Ali the emotions, the feelings of their history have been flickering, and now there’s enough that it lends a surreality to the moment: Johnny coming back out of the past, out of a dream, like he’s been waiting for her to call him back.

His eyes flick about like he doesn’t know what to look at, like maybe he’s nervous, or not sure if this is what it looks like. But he’s rubbing her arm, as comfortable as if he’s never stopped touching her all these years.

Ali gazes at him and waits for him to look back. He does, and he slows his movement.

 _Time_ slows.

Seconds stretch on, and Ali wants them to. His hand moves up to her shoulder, his fingers into her hair.

It’s Ali who starts to lean in first, watching his mouth while Johnny is just starting to do that.

But it doesn’t take him too long to catch up. His eyes are closed; he’s such a warm and comforting presence next to her, surrounding her. And she kisses him.

She can feel his nose nestling her cheek and she smiles, because that feels right; that’s how it is to kiss Johnny.

It’s sweet and slow, and Johnny draws her in tighter, and then her hand is on his neck.

The moment stretches back thirty years and more. Old memories surface in her head, of the heartbreak and longing, the regret, but the strongest ones are the passion they had for those years. Ali never felt that again, not that strong: she’s always wondered whether maybe she imagined how it was with him.

She wonders if it was anything like that for Johnny, or whether he was able to move on and forget her easily.

After he kisses her, and then her lips one more languid time, he draws back and waits.

“I don’t feel so cold, anymore,” she says quietly.

“Ali…”

There are thoughts racing in his eyes, and disbelief in his smile, something vulnerable there that reaches out to her.

“Don’t say anything.” She smiles and shakes her head slightly. “We don’t need to say anything, yet.”

Johnny nods, but it’s obvious he doesn’t know what to do instead. All he’s doing is staring at her, the way he’s been doing all day, like he’s been waiting since the last time they saw each other just to see her again.

“Where I’m staying, Johnny…”

He swallows. “Yeah?”

“Everyone’s out tonight.” Ali gazes up at him and rests her head on the shoulder of his jacket. “Will you drive me there?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story, and my alternate timeline, just won't let me go. I had to write more.
> 
> Thank you for all the amazing support. It has been such a thrill!!! Hope you like this part, too.

“No one’s here?” Johnny asks, when Ali closes the door and hangs her jacket up on the rack, and takes his.

He’s looking around again, that uncertainty that somehow draws Ali in. His eyes move from one thing to another in the hall: the Christmas decorations, the polished floor, the doorways, the stairs.

To her.

She smiles, and the breathless feeling that hasn’t really left her since lunchtime is still there. It feels like the corset she once wore to a costume fair: whenever she looks at Johnny properly, it’s been hard to get a deep breath into her lungs.

“No, nobody.”

“Until when?”

“I got a text saying they’re staying with friends, since they aren’t up to driving back tonight.”

Johnny fidgets with the hem of his flannel shirt and then forces both hands down onto the sides of his jeans, tapping them a few times. An effort at casual.

He’s gazing at her, that vulnerability again, and he lets out a deep breath. “So it’s just… you and me, then.”

“It is.”

Now that they’re alone, away from that familiar place where they slipped back into their past as if it had never ended, it’s not so easy to feel so certain of themselves.

Johnny offers a lopsided smile, unsure. The breathlessness tightens around Ali’s chest, and she knows one thing, at least.

“It’s good to see you, Johnny.”

His face lights up like the smile he gave her at lunch. She’d forgotten what it was like to have him stare at her fixedly like that, and remembering it, now, feels like coming home at last, after a lifetime away.

“More than good,” he says, a rasp in his voice. He clears his throat.

“Do you still drink cocoa?”

A little line comes into his forehead. “Do I… what?”

Ali smiles and tips her head to the side, nodding at the room through the first doorway, where she and Johnny used to hang out a lot.

“You wanna come in here and sit by the old fireplace? I’ll get us a hot drink.”

*

The cosy, small living room has big windows onto the street. It’s got a new chesterfield opposite the fireplace, the white shag rug on the carpet in between has been replaced with a new one, too, but the rest is how it always was. Marble statue in the niche over to the side, same cedar chest under the long mirror on the wall, the fireplace and brass tools. Another familiar place from their past.

The fireplace is always left set to go, so all Johnny needs to do is light the paper, and he’s kneeling and making sure it catches the kindling when Ali comes in with two white mugs. She sits down before the fire and holds the cocoas in her lap, watching Johnny’s broad back as he gets it going properly.

They end up sitting on the rug together, against the chesterfield, legs stretched out, bare feet waiting for the warmth from the flames to spread in the room as they drink their cocoa. The woodsmoke is fragrant and pleasant, warming, and the sound of crackling twigs splits the air from time to time with its soft snaps.

Ali’s close enough that Johnny seems to have the same impulse he had at Golf N’ Stuff, because he smiles and his arm comes around her shoulders. She leans into him like she belongs, resting against the leather sofa together, her forearm nestled into the soft brush flannel of his shirt.

In every way that matters, it feels exactly like it used to; it’s only the surface details which have changed. A different cologne, his body fully grown, his clothes more modern, his face lined and starting to age, beautiful now in a new way.

But it’s still Johnny.

“I keep wondering if this is all a dream,” Ali says, into a moment steeped in meaning for her.

“It’s no dream.”

It’s from up above her ear, so close: the same voice she remembers, almost.

“It is, though. It’s one that I’ve been having… I think ever since…”

Before the words are barely out, Johnny presses his mouth against the top of her head, maybe so that she knows it isn’t. Maybe so that _he_ does.

He stays, breathing there, and Ali lets him wear out his need to do it.

She slips her hand inside his open shirt and finds his heart, over the black cotton of his tee. She feels his warmth and life, its subtle rhythm. Leaves her fingers there covering it.

She gazes up at him, like she did on the bench.

The color of his eyes has always changed from moment to moment, she remembers. Sometimes they’re blue steel, or else so pale it’s almost a grey, and other times cornflower blue, like right now.

There are so many words which they could say to each other about the past; perhaps even more about the future. But right now they have the present, swelled up and infused with so much significance that Ali knows for sure now that she didn’t imagine her memory of what it used to feel like to be with Johnny.

That passion was real, and it’s been waiting here for them all this time.

If only they’d known that all they needed to do, was to reclaim it.

And with no effort required to potentiate its return into full, blooming, but now mature form.

The passion with a twinge of pain for its immense strength: enough that when you get to hold the person again, you fear what you could ever find to do to keep going, if you’re forced to let go again.

There’s sadness in the creases around Johnny’s eyes, and Ali knows why.

Why did they allow themselves to be robbed of the life they could have shared?

The trickle of regret finds a way in so instantaneously that Ali can’t stop it from happening. When Johnny sees, he works his jaw as an act of suppressing emotion that she remembers he always did, and he firmly shakes his head, _no,_ at her.

His thumb brushes along under her eye and she feels the moisture he takes away.

“Don’t, Ali.”

“It’s just…”

“I know,” he says thickly. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

In front of them the fire burns along steadily: crackling, warm, red-orange glow.

It’s Johnny who comes down to kiss her this time, his gentle lips like home upon hers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one starts with a flashback to young Johnny and Ali. It’s when they were first together, and hanging out in the same room where we left them in 2018, in the previous chapter.

**1983**

_Johnny’s lying on his back next to her, like she is, side by side on the thick rug together. He’s got his legs bent like Ali does, his knee knocking into hers while they talk, and he’s got her hand inside a big, soft grip, resting on the place where their legs lie touching._

_Ali hadn’t had a boyfriend before she started dating Johnny. Not a serious one._

_And she knows that what she has with him is about as serious as it gets._

_Johnny looks over to smile at her and his fingers tighten in a pulse around hers, and then open up their grip and find her fingertips to press against, stretched long, spread out like a star, matching hers. It’s those little moments - the quiet ones that people who don’t know Johnny might not expect – those are the ones that make her heart skip every other beat when they’re alone._

_Ali wonders if he has any idea how impossible it is for her not be totally in love with him. He’d better feel the same way, otherwise Ali is in so much trouble here._

_She thinks he does: he_ tells _her he does, and he kisses her like he does. And it seems like he does every moment they’re together._

_“Johnny?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“I was thinking about what we were talking about. You know, the other night.”_

_Johnny disentangles and rolls over to face her. He rests his hand lightly on her stomach, on top of her sweater, his hair hanging over his face as he looks right into her eyes._

_“You don’t have to make up your mind until you’re ready, Ali.”_

_By his expression, he’s either the best liar in the world, or the boyfriend who cares for her a lot, like she thinks he is._

_Ali’s decided to bet everything she has on the second one._

_When she rolls into him and slowly pulls his arm over her, her heart misses most of the remaining beats. She twines her legs with his, and her arm around him, wrapping him so they’re holding each other close._

_“I love you,” she whispers._

_The hand at her back rubs gently along her spine, and Johnny smiles in a way that Ali knows he_ must _be feeling this, too. Must be feeling like they’re going to last forever._

_“Love you, too.”_

_He kisses her softly._

_Ali’s ready. She’s never wanted anything so much._

**2018**

In a signal that she knows he won’t mistake, Ali takes some cushions from the sofa, two cushions, one each.

Johnny watches; she sees the way he swallows, glances away, takes a measured breath when she drops them on the rug, as pillows. She slowly lays down there, and stretches out one hand to him.

He pushes himself lightly away from the front of the sofa, and comes on his knees to her to take her hand. His is warm and dry, still that soft grip. And then he’s lying down at her side, and they’re facing like they were that day.

“Do you remember, Johnny?” she asks.

He answers so quickly that he must have been already thinking about it, too. “You think I could ever forget?” He smiles, and there’s just a shading of that sadness, but it’s being replaced by the wide, shining smile again, like he did when he first saw her.

“I walked around on air for the next week,” he says.

Ali laughs gently. “You did.”

There’s enough light in his smile to make the rest of the feelings, the regret and the pain of what they missed, insignificant. And she knows Johnny gets it: gets how it feels to be in the same pose together.

It feels like an opportunity.

Like maybe they can… go back there. Maybe they can start it all over, from right here.

He strokes her hair, running his fingers along her hairline. “You know… you’re still as beautiful as you ever were.”

She laughs again, embarrassed by the sudden and ludicrous compliment. She pushes lightly on his chest. “Come on. There’s no need to say things that we both know aren’t true.”

His eyebrows shoot up and there’s a teasing look. “You calling me a liar?”

“I’ve gotten old, Johnny. We both have.”

He gives a flirtatious grin. “Now you’re saying I look like an old man?”

She stares into his eyes, his face, taking him in from so close. Her Johnny is in there still, unchanged through the changes of time.

“No. I guess I’m saying…” Ali hesitates, but what the hell. “You can still make me feel… exactly the way I used to.”

His big, warm hand comes quickly, softly to cover her cheek, and she knows he’s reassuring her, that she’s not the only one.

“So much, Ali.”

You’re back, aren’t you? she thinks. It’s really true.

No wonder Johnny said the rest of it doesn’t matter now.

It doesn’t matter about the past, because _forever_ can start anytime you let it.


End file.
